Sergio Pérez on life next to Verstappen: “At Red Bull, everything became a problem”
Sergio Pérez has never been shy. But his latest account of four turbulent years at Red Bull lands with a thud: being Max Verstappen’s teammate there, he says, is “by far the hardest job in Formula 1.”
Speaking on the Cracks podcast, Pérez painted a stark picture of life inside a Verstappen-led operation, claiming from day one he was told exactly what he was walking into. “This project is for Max,” he recalls being told in his first sit-down with then-team boss Christian Horner. “We’ll race with two cars because we have to, but Max is our talent.”
None of that shocked Pérez. He took the seat in 2021 knowing he’d be measured against a generational benchmark — and, as he tells it, against a car philosophy that increasingly bent toward that benchmark. The Mexican says the odd moment when things tilted his way only made the rest of it sting more.
“In early 2022, by mistake, the car came out really heavy and the weight was too far forward,” Pérez said. “It was more stable — what I was always looking for. From the simulator, I was faster than Max.” That stability let him switch off the mental gymnastics and simply race. He turned up on Fridays genuinely thinking about winning.
Then came the first round of upgrades. As Pérez explains it, once the development path was set, “there is a very clear direction the team absolutely has to follow,” and his harmony with the car began to fade. The easy confidence evaporated; the mental load returned. “I had to start thinking about how to drive it — and not crashing.”
He describes 2023 as a copy-paste of that arc: competitive until Barcelona, and then suddenly staring at a stopwatch that wouldn’t move. “I was already a second slower per lap. I couldn’t control the car anymore.”
From there, the spotlight only tightened. “The pressure started to build and the driver was the culprit,” he said. “At Red Bull, absolutely everything was a problem. If you were too quick, that would become a problem. If I was faster than Max, it was always a problem. If I was slower than Max, it was also a problem. So everything became a problem!”
Pérez’s words will resonate with anyone who’s watched that second Red Bull seat chew through good drivers. Pierre Gasly and Alex Albon both arrived with credentials and left with scars. Pérez, more experienced and more pragmatic than most, outlasted them — winning multiple grands prix and providing anchor points in the constructors’ fights — but admits the environment wore him down. He stayed through the end of 2024 before the relationship ran its course.
Here’s the nuance in his retelling: alongside the sting sits a kind of learned stoicism. “Complaining wasn’t the answer,” he said. “I learned a great deal about making the absolute very best of the situation and getting the most benefit possible.”
There’s also a hint of what-could-have-been. “We had the team to dominate for the next 10 years,” Pérez said of the Verstappen–Red Bull axis. “Unfortunately, everything is over now.” Whether you buy that assessment or not, the feeling is clear: Pérez believes the ingredients were there for a dynasty beyond the one already built around a four-time World Champion in Verstappen.
The broader truth is more mundane and just as brutal: when you’re up against a driver operating at Verstappen’s level, in a structure designed to extract every last tenth from him, the margins for a teammate shrink to nothing. There’s not much sympathy in this sport for those who lost to an all-timer — history tends to remember the winner, not the collateral — but Pérez’s account is a reminder of what the job really is. It’s not just the lap time; it’s the politics of development, the microscope of expectation, the balance between being supportive enough and somehow not too fast on the wrong day.
Pérez knew the deal, took it anyway, and found peaks that showed why Red Bull signed him — and valleys that explained why that seat remains F1’s most volatile. It’s a complicated legacy, and a revealing one.
As for the here and now, Verstappen remains the standard-bearer at Red Bull heading into 2025 — and a four-time World Champion, per the record books. Pérez, for his part, has said his piece. The sport moves on, but the quote will linger: “Being Max’s teammate at Red Bull is the toughest job in Formula 1.” You can argue the point. You can’t say he didn’t live it.
